On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:18 AM, zipher <dreamingforw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay. I apologize for thinking in C and believing "int" was a keyword. It
> isn't in Python as you remind me. However, this is where I'm arguing the
> purity has hammered practicality into the ground.
>
> Python is trying to be as elegant as LISP in trying to make everything an
> Object. It's not necessary, and it's trying to put lipstick on a pig instead
> of making BBQ. Python will be as elegant, but in a different direction of
> the axis.
>
How is it a problem for an integer to be an object? In Python, I can
put together a generic handler for a generic list and depend on
everything being an object:
lst = ["asdf", 2, lambda x: x+1, re.compile("q[a-tv-z]"), 3.14159]
In Java, I would have to box up that integer 2 and that float 3.14159
(and maybe the string too?) to make it possible to put them into a
generic collection, because integers and objects are fundamentally
different things. In Python, ints and floats and strings all follow
the same rules as other objects: they can be passed around, stored in
collections, turned into strings with str() or repr(), etc, etc, etc.
They have methods, they react to operators, everything is done
according to a simple set of rules. This does not harm practicality -
it's extremely helpful in a number of situations.
And I still don't see how this has anything to do with your confusion
about shadowing the name 'int'. As I see it, attempting to redefine
int to be a null subclass of str should have one of two results:
either it's a straight-up error, or it does exactly what happens in
Python - calling 'int' now calls a subclass of 'str'.
ChrisA
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